Clownfish Blues

Chapter 23

The Next Day

A mom-and-pop motel sat on a corner of Biscayne Boulevard between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. A simple turquoise court topped with white barrel tiles. It was once a sparkling postcard oasis where families on a budget drove two days in station wagons from Illinois and Indiana to enjoy a safe and happy vacation in paradise. Manicured lawn, shrubbery trimmed to strict angles, an intoxicating tropical palette of azalea, jacaranda, bougainvillea, poinciana. Children splashed in the pool, newfangled window air-conditioning units dripped on the sidewalk, and everyone bought ice cream next door from a stand in the shape of a large sugar cone. It was actually called the Florida Motel, with a neon sign in the shape of the state, bragging about color TV and shuffleboard.

That was then.

Today it clung to life as one of the countless old joints tucked among pawnshops, liquor stores and victim clinics, with its own constellation of the undead orbiting at all hours. The swimming pool had an aggressive aroma of chlorine ever since the crime tape came down, and police required the office to supply photocopies of driver’s licenses from everyone who checked in, except the manager let that slide for ten bucks.

The sun was at that point just below the horizon where approximately half the cars whizzing by had their lights on. A taxi pulled over and picked up a gorilla. Most of the motel rooms were dark, but number four had a glimmer of life. Inside it was quiet. The wall over the bed featured a faded Edward Hopper painting of a lonely person staring out a motel window at a lot of wheat. On the other side of the room, a lanky man stood intense and motionless at the sink, as he had for an obsessively lengthy time.

“Serge,” said Coleman. “Why do you keep staring at that bag of uncooked rice?”

“Because my new cell phone is in it.”

“Why?”

“Rice is supposed to absorb the moisture if you get your phone wet.” Serge crouched down and inspected the bag two inches from his face. “This is the coolest gadget I’ve ever owned, so I’m going balls out with household tips. The most crucial step is not to turn your cell back on too soon. If you do and there’s any wetness still inside, the power surge will fry the circuitry. It’s a test of patience now.”

Coleman popped the cap off a beer bottle. “Why am I wearing a skin-diver suit with rubber gloves, boots and a mask?”

“More on that later.” He checked his wristwatch. “Hmm, I wonder if I’ve waited long enough. I must have waited long enough because my feet are starting to throb.”

“I say go for it.” Fart.

“That means I better wait . . . What are you drinking now?”

“Miller High Life!” Coleman thrust the bottle above his head in triumph. “The champagne of beers!”

“Coleman, do you realize what a ridiculous advertising slogan that is? Had all the executives just chugged a case of the stuff before green-lighting that chestnut?”

“What are you talking about?”

“In marketing, it’s not just what you call attention to, but what you don’t,” said Serge. “I mean, ‘the champagne of beers’? That’s like ‘Miami Mass Transit: The Rolls-Royce of riding the bus.’”

“Miller gets me fucked up. That’s all I know.”

“Now that’s a slogan.”

Serge raised the bag of rice and shook it. Coleman popped another beer, using the drawer handle on the nightstand. A police officer left the motel office with a stack of photocopied driver’s licenses. Someone screamed and clawed their eyes after jumping in the swimming pool. Coleman threw up in the nightstand’s drawer and closed it. “I say the phone’s ready.”

Serge slowly began to nod in agreement. “I’ve definitely given it more than enough time. Now I’m just wasting my life.” He swiftly yanked the phone out of the bag and turned it on.

Coleman walked over with a squeaking of neoprene. “Look! It’s working!”

“So it is,” Serge said with a satisfied grin.

Coleman pointed as the tiny screen suddenly zapped to black. “What just happened?”

“Son of a bitch!” Serge flung the broken device in a rage, and now the room’s Edward Hopper painting featured a lonely person looking out at a field of wheat with a giant cell phone in the middle.

“That was pretty interesting,” said Coleman.

Serge walked over to the window and peered outside. “It’s almost dark enough.”

“What for?”

“Back to the wet suit you’re wearing.”

“Almost forgot I had it on.”

“How does it feel?”

“Wet again inside.”

“Hold this in front of you.”

“Why?”

“Because the panda costume wasn’t cutting it.”

“You don’t mean . . .”

“That’s right.” Serge nodded again. “We’re taking sign-spinning big!”

Fifteen minutes later, Serge and Coleman stood in front of a narrow storefront with extra burglar bars and reinforced concrete pylons to prevent smash-and-grabs using stolen vehicles to ram the entrance. A cardboard sign lay at their feet: We Buy Gold.

“It finally stopped raining,” said Serge.

“The streets are flooded again.”

“Doesn’t affect your big debut.” Serge grabbed a plastic atomizer bottle. “Now hold out the left arm again.”

Coleman reluctantly complied. “I don’t know about this. What if something goes wrong?”

“I’m a professional. What can possibly go wrong? . . . Now stick out your right leg . . .”

“There’s got to be another way.”

“Trust me,” said Serge. “We’re about to turn the sign-spinning world on its head!”

“Then why don’t you wear the wet suit?”

“Stop whining! You’re about to become an Internet rock star!” Serge reached in his pocket. “If anything, I’m the one making the sacrifice . . . Stay still. The only thing you have to remember is not to panic . . .”

Thirty seconds later, Coleman ran shrieking in terrified circles in the parking lot.

“You’re panicking,” yelled Serge.

Motorists on U.S. 1 slammed their brakes and dialed emergency numbers, watching in disbelief as a person fully engulfed in flames ran around a parking lot with a burning cardboard sign.

“Look at all the attention you’re getting!” said Serge.

Coleman sprinted by. “I’m all on fire!”

“I told you I used low-burn-temperature cooking alcohol,” said Serge. “It’s just a little bit of fire.”

Coleman dashed back the other way. “Aaaaauuuuuhhhhhh!”

“Shit, he’s running into traffic.” Serge grabbed an extinguisher. “Coleman, stop moving so I can put you out.”

Cars jumped curbs and rear-ended each other as Serge chased his friend around the street with blasts of foam.

Coleman eventually stopped in the intersection, removed his mask and looked at the steam coming off his arms. “Am I out?”

“Except for that foot. Stick it in that puddle on the edge of the street.”

Sizzle.

Serge gave the smoldering black suit a final blast of foam. “There, good as new. Now don’t you feel silly?”

“Holy turds,” said Coleman. “Look at all the people pulling into our strip mall to sell their gold.”

A horrible squealing of tires. Crash.

A horn continuously blared from the wrecked car.

“Uh-oh,” said Serge. “That guy just had an accident, and of course he’s probably going to try and blame us.”

“Some people,” said Coleman.

“We better go help . . .” Serge ran up to the side of the convertible. “Sir, are you okay?”

The woozy driver raised his head off the steering wheel. “What happened?”

“You smashed up your car because you weren’t paying attention.”

Coleman pulled off charred rubber gloves. “Nothing we did.”

A mother with two small children ran over. Serge looked them up and down. “What happened to you?”

“That jerk drenched us! He deliberately swung over from the center lane to hit a deep puddle while we were waiting in the bus shelter. I just bought this phone!”

Serge turned back to the car. “Wait a second . . .” He took a step back to appraise the color and model-year of the Porsche. Then walked around back to check the license plate.

Scrw U.

“Sir.” Serge opened the driver’s door. “On second thought, you need to come with us.”

“Why?”

“As a safety precaution, you should be held for observation.”

Just Up the Street

The stitching above the pocket on the oily shirt said Jeremy. The auto mechanic looked down into the glass case. “I’ll take the Big Bucks scratch-off, Money Bags, Huge Loot, the Price Is Right, a Lotto quick-pick, a pack of Winstons and the beer.”

The convenience-store clerk rang him up while arguing with his girlfriend on the phone.

“Oh, and can you check if this one’s a winner?”

The clerk scanned an old ticket and handed the mechanic a crumpled five-dollar bill. The next customer stepped up. “Let me have a Ruby Riches, King’s Gold, Bejeweled Diamonds . . .”

Outside in the surveillance van, the supervising agent leaned over a shoulder at a computer screen. “So this one store is responsible for how many, now?”

The tech pressed buttons. “Twelve different straw buyers have each won at least fifty times in the last year, all over five hundred a throw. But that’s a tough prosecution with complicit customers, so we have to nab them ripping off the unsuspecting ones.”

The undercover agent in a mechanic’s shirt climbed into the van. “Only gave me five dollars.”

“We saw it on your pinhole camera.”

“What’s the status?”

“Still waiting— . . . Hold on.” The computer tech watched the numbers change in a live feed from the lottery’s main computers in Tallahassee. “That’s it! He just cashed it in for five hundred!”

The supervising agent grabbed the radio. “All units, go! Repeat, go!”

A half-dozen vans whipped around the corner. Side doors flew open. Agents in black vests hit the ground running.

“Everyone out of the store! . . . You! Away from the counter! . . .”

The clerk was arrested, and the lottery machines unplugged. But neither was moved yet because the officers were waiting for the TV stations they had called. When the satellite trucks arrived and all the cameras were in place, out came the handcuffed employee and the hand truck with the lottery machine. On top of the machine, strategically positioned for the benefit of the home audience: glistening rolls of scratch-off tickets from the glass case. The idea was to increase sales that night.

“This is Reevis Tome reporting live for Florida Cable News in Fort Lauderdale, where an independent convenience store has just been raided by state lottery officials after an undercover agent caught a clerk red-handed . . .”

“Dundee,” said Brisbane. “Zoom in on those shiny rolls.”

“. . . Meanwhile, simultaneous raids occurred today at sixteen other outlets across Broward and Miami-Dade counties in a coordinated sting operation dubbed ‘Millionaire Cash Frenzy’ after the latest instant game being heavily promoted . . .”

By the end of the evening, all the hubbub had died down, the clerk made bail, and the good people of the community were dozing off to the late news that concluded with a piece about a Miami revitalization committee seeking funds to clean up the city, and submitted a downtown map with icons documenting where people had pooped in unauthorized locations. Completely true.

The clerk who had just gotten out of jail returned to the convenience store for double duty on the late shift, because the owner was pissed. Business fell to a trickle since the store no longer had lottery tickets and people took their beer and cigarette money elsewhere. Just after midnight, a white Jaguar pulled up outside. A tall man with dreadlocks entered and looked down into the empty glass case. His right hand rested on the counter, fingers tapping in rhythm. The back of the hand had a tattoo of a flaming skull that said Mother. He didn’t speak, and the employee didn’t care because he was on the phone. Finally, the clerk covered up his cell.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Where are the scratch-off tickets?”

“We don’t sell them anymore.”

“Why not?”

“We just don’t.”

“I like the scratch-offs.”

“There are plenty of other places around here that still sell them.”

“But I want to buy some here.”

“I just told you, we don’t have any.” The clerk looked closer. “Do I know you?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you in here with the owner a few times.”

The customer looked up at a small black dome in the middle of the ceiling. “Is that a real security camera, or just a dummy?”

“It’s real. And I would like you to leave.”

“Hang up the phone.”

“Listen, asshole—”

A pistol with a silencer came out. The black dome shattered. “It was a dummy. Why did you lie to me?”

The clerk dropped the phone as he backed up and raised his hands. “Take all the money. It’s yours.”

“I already knew that.” He walked around behind the counter and crushed the dropped cell phone with the heel of a snakeskin boot . . .

. . . House lights went dark in bedrooms across the bedroom neighborhoods, and revolving red ones came on outside a convenience store on U.S. 1.

Before it was over, the street outside Mart-Mart was again full of police vehicles and TV vans. They found the body in the alley behind the Dumpster, hands tied behind the back. They needn’t wait for identification. The victim’s face had just been all over the news when he was paraded out of the convenience store in handcuffs just a few hours earlier. The ruling wasn’t official yet, but the cause of death would eventually be classified as asphyxiation from the victim’s head being completely wrapped numerous times with rolls of scratch-off tickets.